


the edge of warfare

by metronomin



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Character Death, Established Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin, Fluff and Angst, Guns, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, M/M, Memories, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Nostalgia, Pining, Slow Burn, War, Weapons, but only like one scene by one asshole character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:48:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25091131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metronomin/pseuds/metronomin
Summary: “Renjun, I’m sorry. I have to go, this is for the greater good.”“Greater good,” Renjun scoffs. “I’m the greatest good you’ll ever get! Don’t you love me too?”Silence.“Coward,” Renjun bites out, wiping the tears futilely from his eyes. Every word from his lips is laced with dagger-sharp pain. “You absolute coward. Lee Donghyuck, don’t you dare board that fucking train.”-Donghyuck enlists for the Second Korean War. Renjun makes things more complicated, and Donghyuck finds himself stuck not just in a war between territories, but in himself.
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan
Comments: 25
Kudos: 71
Collections: Renhyuck Fic Fest Round 1





	the edge of warfare

**Author's Note:**

> tw // descriptions of blood, minor descriptions of violence, mention of weapons, homophobia in one scene (begins from "3. Take care of your men." all the way until the line.)

On that drafty Tuesday afternoon, Donghyuck reaches the front of the queue at the makeshift booth in front of the embassy, hands shaking. A young man in military uniform slips him a form and a ballpoint pen, motioning at Donghyuck to use the table in front of him.

The first page of the form is relatively harmless, asking for basic information: name, date of birth, existing medical conditions, etcetera. He fills the blanks with a lump in his throat.

As he turns the page, Donghyuck swallows.

In bold, at the top of the page: **“Voluntary Armed Forces Notice Of Enlistment.”**

Further down, in smaller print:

_I, --------, hereby consent to enlist in the South Korean Armed Forces. I understand that I will be ordered to active duty as a Soldier over the indefinite course of the Second Korean War, and that I am to obey orders without question._

Donghyuck’s father had been a soldier, once; posted at the DMZ ten out of twelve months of the year. There had been a shootout (never revealed to the public, of course) when Donghyuck was five years old, and he had never come back. Even when the leaves began to fall and the seasons bled into each other, Donghyuck’s father never arrived home.

Then, Donghyuck had been too young to understand death, to fully comprehend its implications. However, he’d been old enough to understand sadness, and that his mother was suddenly sad all the time; crying and throwing up into the toilet past midnight as he looked on helplessly from the slightest crack of his bedroom door.

Eventually, the grief subsided: an ever-present dark cloud instead of a hurricane. Donghyuck grew up, made friends and finished high school. Despite the passing time, the reminders remained: his father’s mug never gets thrown out, the pictures stay on the wall. Little traces of a ghost haunting Donghyuck’s childhood.

The pamphlet had arrived on their doorstep on a Monday morning, black and grey and solemn, urging for any male between the ages of 18 and 40 to enlist to serve the country. “North and South Korea have been at conflict for far too long!”, it had proclaimed in bold font. “We must assert our dominance! Claim our rightful land with us, young men!”

His mother had slid it over the breakfast table with an index finger, cautious like it was a curse. He’d looked for a long time at the shoddily printed paper, staring at the characters. Seeing but not reading.

When he’d looked up, his mother’s eyes had been tired. So, so tired.

_I understand that my enlistment into the South Korean Armed Forces is in a nonpay status, and that I am not entitled to any benefits of privileges in the Armed Forces, to include, but not limited to medical care, liability insurance, death benefits, education benefits, or disability retired pay if I am to incur a physical disability._

Renjun had come over later. It seemed he, too, had received the flyer in the mail.

Donghyuck had known Renjun since kindergarten, when Renjun had toppled Donghyuck’s sandcastle on accident during recess. They had become best friends an hour later, when Donghyuck, in return, tore up the drawing Renjun had worked on for all of art class. Simpler times, they often mused. Good times.

“What bullshit,” Renjun had grumbled. “I can’t believe they’re actually expecting people to volunteer.”

“Why?”

“For starters, you’re not even getting paid. You get no benefits: no proper burial if you die on the field, no compensation even if you come back completely paralysed. The most recognition you get is a shitty medal from the government, and that’s considering you’re in a high enough rank and manage to stay alive.”

“That’s true.”

Pause.

“You’re quiet today.” Renjun had sat up from where he lay, sprawled on top of Donghyuck’s comforter to look at him.

Donghyuck had just stared at his fingers. “No, I’m not.”

“You are.” Renjun squinted. “Don’t tell me you’re actually thinking of volunteering. Not after what happened to your dad.”

Would anyone understand, if he told them he wanted to enlist? He could already imagine the gossipy ladies in his neighbourhood calling him a horrible son for making his mother relive the grief if he died, a foolish boy who jumped into the deep end without knowing how to swim. Something in him told him his mother already knew what his decision would be: she hadn’t spoken since that morning, barely blinking when Renjun had come by.

If he told him, would Renjun understand? Donghyuck was tired of grieving after a man he had barely known his entire life. Donghyuck wanted to be better: wanted to come back from that war alive with the bruises to show for it, to show that he had been stronger than his father.

Did he himself even understand? He pushes this thought down.

“Of course not.” His voice had slipped out more uncertain than he’d wanted it to. “I would be… absolutely mad.”

Appeased, Renjun had lain back down, steering the conversation elsewhere. Donghyuck had pretended to listen and nod along, making noises of assent at the right places. He tried not to stare at Renjun’s figure on his bed, thumbing listlessly through a book.

The truth was, on afternoons like those where the sun streamed through the curtains just right, Renjun glowed like an angel; his figure illuminated, tan skin golden. Renjun was familiar, molten warmth, and Donghyuck didn’t want to think about how that makes him feel.

(In the end, it almost stops him from going.)

_My signature below is proof of my consent to serve the South Korean government as I am told to, and my understanding of these terms._

“Hello? Sir?"

Donghyuck is snapped out of his thoughts by the soldier in front of him, who gestures expectantly at the form, where the most crucial space remains blank.

Donghyuck almost doesn’t sign. Something in him wants to back away, shake his head, apologise to the soldier and say it was a mistake. He thinks of the knowing, resigned expression that had passed over his mother’s face like a shadow when he’d told her he was going out that afternoon. He thinks of Renjun, who had outwardly expressed his distaste for the idea, who would kill him when he found out.

The tip of the pen hesitates over the paper.

“Sir?”

Donghyuck exhales.

He signs.

The soldier takes his time to look over Donghyuck’s form, then looks back up. “You’ll need to be at the train station on Thursday, just before the sun rises. From there, we’ll be taking you to Gangwon, where you’ll undergo training for three months before being sorted into a platoon.”

Mutely, Donghyuck nods. Gangwon was way up in the mountain, hours away from the seaside town Donghyuck had grown up in all his life. The soldier extends a firm hand with a grim smile.

“Welcome aboard, Mr. Lee.”

This is it, Donghyuck thinks, shaking the soldier’s hand hesitantly. This is signing his life away.

* * *

Thursday morning arrives like a curse.

Only Donghyuck’s mother knows, and Renjun. Renjun had stormed out of the house when Donghyuck told him, fists balled. There had been no words, just deafening silence and the sound of his front door slamming itself on Renjun’s way out.

His mother had just stared at him in the soulless way she had since the pamphlet came. Donghyuck didn’t know which reaction was worse.

He hadn’t asked his mother to come with him: that would’ve been too cruel of him, asking her to bid farewell again to someone perhaps for the last time. He hadn’t realised how much taller he’d grown until he’d hugged her thin frame on the way out and realised that she barely came up to his shoulders. It had been a quiet, solemn goodbye: Donghyuck had held back his tears, and his mother had just smiled emptily in an attempt at placation as he stopped at the gate to look back at her.

Now, Donghyuck stands on the platform, a small bag in his hand. He’d packed the barest essentials: the less he packed, he’d figured, the less he’d have to miss. Inside were three pictures, and a small notebook. The pictures were small, barely bigger than his finger: one of his mother preparing dinner from Christmas, one of Renjun at the book fair just a month prior, and the last of his father. His father in a uniform, waving, his smile unencumbered.

Two reminders of what he had to go back to. One reminder of what he had to go forward to surpass. All reminders to stay alive.

As the train approached, and the platform began to fill with many boys around his age, Donghyuck steels himself, joining the back of a queue to get on the train. Just as he reaches the front, a voice shouts his name.

“Lee Donghyuck!”

He swivels around. Right behind him is Huang Renjun; hair a mess, panting as if he’d run to the station. Donghyuck’s eyes widen. “Renjun--”

“Train 14C leaves in 2 minutes,” The mechanical voice of the PA system announces, impartial.

“Donghyuck,” Renjun walks closer. His eyes are full of tears. “I love you.”

The world stills.

“What? Renjun, what the hell are you talking about--”

Renjun steps even closer, and twin tears stream down opposite cheeks. There’s barely any space between them now, and as Donghyuck can feel the hot breath on his face as Renjun speaks. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. Donghyuck, please, I’ll stand here and beg you-- _please_ don’t get on that train.”

Renjun loves him?

Donghyuck’s mind flashes to every single time Renjun had told him he didn’t want to get into a relationship, how he was waiting for the right one. It clicks.

He’d been waiting for Donghyuck all along.

The universe, Donghyuck vaguely muses, must be laughing at him.

“Renjun, I have to go, the train’s leaving, and I can’t--”

“Anything for you not to go,” Renjun pushes, stubborn. Tears stream down his face like bullets. “Don’t you get it? I love you. I have since you tore my shitty drawing in kindergarten. Please don’t leave. Why are you leaving?”

“Renjun, I’m sorry. I have to go, this is for the greater good.”

“Greater good,” Renjun scoffs. “I’m the greatest good you’ll ever get! Don’t you love me too?”

Silence.

“Coward,” Renjun bites out, wiping the tears futilely from his eyes. Every word from his lips is laced with dagger-sharp pain. “You absolute coward. Lee Donghyuck, don’t you _dare_ board that _fucking_ train.”

Did Donghyuck love Renjun?

The scenes flash by, a movie sequence before Donghyuck’s very eyes: Renjun, aged four with a yellow cap, kicking over Donghyuck’s pride and joy. Renjun, aged ten, breaking his arm in a game of football with the neighbourhood kids. Renjun: volunteering at the library, sharing his earphones with Donghyuck on the bus, rambling on and on about poets and words at the book fair.

Renjun, lying leisurely on his bed, golden in the midday sunlight.

Was that love?

Time doesn’t slow for Donghyuck to make his decision. Earth still turns. “Train 14C leaves in one minute.” The PA resounds.

“I- I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” Renjun cries. “If you loved me, you wouldn’t get on that train.”

“Renjun, it’s not that simple--”

“I’ll never forgive you if you leave. Even if you come back alive, I’ll never forgive you. I’d rather you dead. This I promise you. Don’t go. I’ll do anything. I-I’ll stop! Loving you. I’ll stop everything. Anything you want. Just don’t get on that train. I love you, I’ll _show_ you how much I love you.”

Donghyuck’s chest slams against Renjun’s, and he can barely breathe before he's pulled into an intense kiss.

Renjun tastes like tears and cheap chapstick, his warm breath against his mouth. He stiffens against Renjun’s embrace. Time seems to pause for a split second even though Donghyuck can see the traitorous second hand moving in the clock in front of him, taunting him.

For some reason, he feels his eyes flutter closed. For a single second, Donghyuck lets himself sink into the kiss. In hindsight, he reckons that given just a moment more, he would’ve gladly watched the train leave without him, smoke billowing, to stay with Renjun.

But the train engine rumbles to life behind him, and Donghyuck remembers where he is. Remembers his mission, his everything.

Without even thinking, he pushes Renjun away. He doesn’t remember if he apologises or not, doesn’t remember if Renjun says anything; only bolts into the train just as the doors close. As the train leaves the platform, he watches through the window as Renjun passes in a blur of colour; fingers still touching his lips, face red and expression contorted in a mixture of betrayal and hurt.

It’s a picture to remember. Later, Donghyuck falls like a brick into a random seat, lips swollen from a kiss he’ll never get back. He wonders if he’s already lost everything he’s had to gain.

* * *

The training camp in Gangwon is bleak and cold, even in the day. Donghyuck hates it already.

The moment he steps off the train at the station, he’s ushered into a bus with 50 other men, all ranging in size and stature and haircut. The only visible similarity is the fact that they all look scared.

Donghyuck ends up next to a boy around his age with kind eyes and sharp features. Prepared to sit in awkward silence the entire trip, Donghyuck moves to pull out the pictures in his little pouch when the boy speaks.

“Fun stuff, don’t you think? War. Death. Direct involvement in the war. A different kind of stress for finals this year.”

Donghyuck turns, putting his pouch down as he smiles. “Yeah, you could say that. Truly the college experience I was dreaming of when I was a kid.”

The boy smiles, extends his hand. “Na Jaemin.”

“Lee Donghyuck.”

Neither of them ask questions about each other’s past, not now. They indulge each other in small talk and stupid games for the hour-long ride, possibly the loudest amongst the idle chatter that fills the otherwise stony bus. Later, to both their luck, they end up in the same platoon.

“What a surprise,” Donghyuck says, throwing his pouch onto one of the beds. Jaemin takes the bed to his right, closest to the wall. “Must be fated, or some shit.”

“Right. Might have to stop you there, though. I am… unavailable."

Looking over, Jaemin is smiling bashfully.

“Oh?” Donghyuck pokes, and Jaemin erupts in a blush. “Don’t worry. My love life… is.”

“Complicated? Non-existent?”

“It… is what it is, I suppose.”

“I see.”

The truth is, Donghyuck still didn’t quite know what to make of Renjun’s confession, not even mentioning the kiss that had set his bones on fire. Thankfully, Jaemin doesn’t ask. The thought of it occupies his head like the sound of static: fading in and out, never quite gone, exacerbated when he consciously chooses to ignore it.

It’s not good for him, he realises, as war training begins.

From his first briefing with his section leader, a burly sergeant named Mingyu, that there are three basic rules for war:

  1. _Your rifle is your wife, and you’re fucked if you go anywhere without it. Sleep lightly. Never let anyone steal it._



Donghyuck, over the course of three months, learns to assemble and disassemble his rifle in under three seconds through complete muscle memory. Any more, he is told over and over, and he’s easy meat for North Korean soldiers. Over time, he grows some sort of attachment to his rifle (probably because war makes any man intimacy-starved after so many years of knowing nothing but love): a lovingly oiled weapon he’s taken to calling Haechan.

One day, he forgets to account for all of Haechan’s parts.

They’re out in the jungle that night: vines and epiphytes everywhere, the foliage cover so dense the sunlight barely reaches the ground even on the sunniest days. When it’s dark, Donghyuck can barely see the outline of his palm in front of his face. Despite this, they’re not even allowed to use their torch lights: enemy soldiers could spot them from a mile out if they weren’t careful.

“Go to sleep,” Mingyu says, that night in the jungle. They’ve learnt how to dig two-metre deep trenches in the ground: narrow, really only fit for one person. Donghyuck’s uniform is soiled beyond all belief when he sinks into the trench, sleeping upright.

When he wakes up the next morning, he finds the muzzle of his rifle missing.

“Fuck,” he hisses at Jaemin, who’s just a couple metres from him. “Fuck. I can’t find my fucking muzzle.”

“Shit,” Jaemin replies, sympathetically panicked. “Did you check if you had everything last night?”

“I think? Everything was there in the day.”

“You think someone took it?”

“God, that would be so twisted, but what other option is there? Bet it was Wootaek, that sick bastard, I--”

“Platoon!” Mingyu’s voice commands. “Gather.”

The soldiers form up in lines like they’re taught to, and in front of them, Mingyu holds up part of a rifle. Donghyuck recognises it immediately, and he nearly gets whiplash from the way his entire body stiffens.

It’s his muzzle.

“I did some random checks last night, and someone wasn’t careful enough to wake up when I blatantly stole the muzzle of their rifle,” Mingyu casts a piercing look across the crowd before it settles onto Donghyuck, and Donghyuck feels the shame set in like a stone. “Mr. Lee Donghyuck? Care to explain yourself?”

War isn’t fair, Donghyuck thinks, when he’s forced to do extra duty when he goes back to camp. It’s not fair at all.

_2\. Always be on time. Travel fast and stealthily. One second, one moment of non-cover, the slightest noise could cost you your life._

“Get the fuck up!” Mingyu roars, every day, without fail, at 4:30 in the morning. “The square, ten minutes, or twenty push-ups for every minute you’re late!”

“Move!” The training instructor shouts when Donghyuck falters for a split second. Can he really blame him? They’d been tasked to complete an obstacle course which required rope climbing and running with tires attached to a rope. “Remember, if you don’t finish in under twenty minutes, it’s a pushup for every second!”

“Fifteen minutes to eat, soldiers!” Mingyu shouts. Donghyuck’s heart sinks into his stomach as he assesses the mile-long queue in the canteen. “Then assemble in the square! You know the drill: every minute, twenty push-ups!”

War isn’t fair, Donghyuck thinks, as he barely manages to stuff two spoonfuls of vegetable rice into his mouth before he’s taking off for the square. He thinks this when he manages to glance in the mirror in the ten allocated shower minutes, seeing the loss of eight kilograms in a month take its toll. His face is gaunt, haggard, a ghost of its past glory. Where his skin used to be tan, it is now pallid and pale.

War isn’t fucking fair, he repeats. A mantra for every torturous day in, every excruciating day out.

_3\. Take care of your men. While you’re not here to make friends, remember that in the end, you’re all on the same side._

Donghyuck likes to think he’s a relatively amiable person. He’s easy to talk to, good at conversation and lightening even the most serious of moods with his carefully curated arsenal of witty anecdotes and comments. But there are just _some_ people he cannot get along with no matter how hard he tries.

Take Kang Wootaek, for example.

Kang Wootaek had shown up, a business mogul’s son, with a cocky glint in his eye and the knowledge that he could probably buy out everyone in the platoon and then some. “My dad says he’s going to buy me a yacht when I come back alive,” He’d boasted to everyone the first night, when they’d been going through introductions. “When this-- ugh, inconvenience is over. Maybe you’ve heard of him? Kang Jinwoo? Founder of--”

Donghyuck had zoned out entirely, tuning Wootaek’s bragging out. Wootaek, somehow, had gotten worse as time passed; talking back to Mingyu and the other sergeants, reminiscent of a spoiled toddler without their favourite toy. He also, for no reason at all, harboured the most potent resentment towards Jaemin.

Where Donghyuck had been struggling with the harsh war regime, Jaemin seemed to be thriving: one of the fastest and strongest in the platoon, constantly clocking among the best times in every training. Despite this, he was never arrogant; always looking down with a sheepish smile when the other men in their platoon praised him or teased him.

Wootaek absolutely loathed him.

One cool night, the topic of significant others is brought up at dinner. Of course, Wootaek is the first to speak.

“I have a girlfriend back home, of course. Her name is Jira, she’s a model, you’ve probably heard of her. Son Jira. Seriously, one of the hottest women in the world.” Almost immediately, he turned his attention to Jaemin. “You. Na Jaemin. You got a girl?”

Another soldier, Jaehyun, laughs. “He probably does, have you seen him? The girls would be all over him.”

Wootaek bares his teeth in the shape of a passive-aggressive smile. “Of course,” He bites. “Answer the question, Na.”

Jaemin looks up. “I don’t have a girl, Kang.”

“What?” The other soldiers break out into shocked whispers. “No way.”

Just as Wootaek opens his mouth to retaliate, Jaemin continues. “I do have a boy, though.”

The table falls silent, and the surprise dawns on everyone like an enlightening. Only Donghyuck seems unsurprised. Jaemin had mentioned in passing before about his boyfriend back home, providing no details at all except the brief flash of a picture he kept in his pocket: a boy with a half-moon smile and kind eyes.

Jaehyun is the first to break the silence. “So you’re, like. Gay?”

Jaemin nods.

Silence from the table. “That’s fine, man,” Jaehyun continues awkwardly, hands fidgeting. “It’s all good.” A couple other soldiers nod as well, murmuring assent.

“No, it’s not,” Wootaek hisses, face turning purple. “You’ve been showering with us, eating with us. And you’re what? Gay? What are you, in love with us? Getting a kick out of seeing us every day?”

Jaemin sighs. Donghyuck steps in, voice sharp. “Shut the fuck up, Kang. Literally no one’s in love with you here.”

“Defending him, Lee?” Wooseok retorts. “Are you like him too?”

“Kang, stop,” Another soldier attempts to defuse the situation. “Don’t fight. It literally doesn’t even affect--”

“Damn, Kwon, sit the fuck down, or are you one of them too?,” Wootaek bites out. “Are you…”

“Don’t fucking say it, Kang,” Donghyuck warns, fists clenching. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Are you a faggot too?”

Unable to hold himself back, Donghyuck launches himself across the table at Wootaek, scrabbling at his neck. The entire table bursts into chaos, and Donghyuck feels Jaehyun physically pull him away as Wootaek gets dragged away by a bunch of their platoon mates.

“I’ll fucking kill you, Kang!” Donghyuck snarls. “I’ll shoot you in your sleep, you homophobic fuck!”

“I dare you,” Wootaek spits. “I’ll sue you for everything you and your bastard family’s got.”

Donghyuck screams in frustration, struggling against Jaehyun’s hold, when Jaemin sits up.

“ENOUGH.”

All falls silent. Where Jaemin was once seated, he stands, hands clenched into fists. The other soldiers look around nervously. The beats stretch out too long, Donghyuck’s heart still pounding with anger in his ears as literal crickets chirp in the background.

Jaemin glances at Donghyuck, then stares at Wootaek again, eyes piercing. Then, without a word, he leaves.

“Coward,” Wootaek mutters, after a full ten seconds of loaded silence after Jaemin’s departure, atmosphere charged with animosity. “Come on,” He motions to his posse of friends, who cower in intimidation. “Let’s get out of here. Wouldn’t want the _faggots_ staring at us.”

Donghyuck growls and pushes forward, but Jaehyun holds him back. As Wootaek leaves, Jaehyun’s hold on Donghyuck loosens, and he steps back.

“Don’t mind him,” Jaehyun assures calmly, but his expression betrays his anger as they watch Wootaek’s back retreat. “He’s always been a dick. We were in the same high school, and god, the number of times I almost decked him--”

“Yeah, I get it,” Donghyuck says. “Fucking douchebag.”

“Tell me about it,” Jaehyun smiles, but it fades quickly. “So… Jaemin’s gay. Are you? Gay, I mean? Not that there’s an issue, I just--.”

“It’s fine.” Donghyuck opens his mouth to say he’s straight. He’s only ever had girlfriends after all: Jihyo, scarily beautiful class president, and Miyeon, who had tutored him in Literature with a shy smile and pretty eyes. In every concrete meaning of the word, he was straight.

But then that image of Renjun and his smile, lit up in the afternoon golden hour, materialises in his head, and suddenly Donghyuck is not so sure.

“I-I don’t know,” He stammers. “It’s just… I... I don’t know.” Jaehyun nods, and the conversation changes. In the army, no one dwells, a reflex trained into them: shoot first, ask questions later.

No one talks about the incident afterwards. Jaemin side steps carefully when Donghyuck tries to talk to him about it, levels his emotion towards doing better in training. Otherwise, nothing changes between them other than the way they both get closer; look out for each other like real brothers.

Nothing changes, except some mornings, Donghyuck wakes up to see scars on Jaemin’s skin, drying blood on his sheets and Wootaek’s knuckles. He’d brought it up once, and Jaemin had backed him into a wall, normally gentle eyes cutting, a fist curled around the collar of Donghyuck’s shirt.

(“Don’t say a word,” Jaemin whispers, voice low and dangerous with an unsaid threat. “This is not your fight. Understood?”)

They never speak about it again. Months pass, yet Donghyuck never again mentions the blue-blacks littering Jaemin’s torso, ignoring the way the water turns pink when they wash up in the morning.

His mantra changes. War isn’t unfair. Life is.

* * *

After three months, training comes to an end, and Donghyuck gets put with his official section. Force 127, one of five waves of infantry soldiers expected at the frontline of land battle, to take place in the once demilitarised zone. Donghyuck doesn’t know if this is a good thing or not. Renowned veteran general Lee Taeyong leads it; the same man that had taken Donghyuck’s enlistment form what felt like lifetimes ago, shaking his hand with a kind smile. When Donghyuck meets him again, he still does the same.

Thankfully, Jaemin gets put in the same force, and Wootaek disappears to god-knows-where. Donghyuck hopes, scathingly, that it’s the navy.

Renjun, for better or worse, has been stewing in his mind. The issue had taken a slight backseat because of how grueling training had been, but it had still been undeniably present: keeping Donghyuck awake on nights when all he wanted was to fall asleep.

The pages of his notebook are stained with dirt and ink, and Donghyuck figures historians will pick it up somewhere one day and find it completely and utterly useless. Random words that had popped into Donghyuck’s mind, lyrics from songs he hasn’t listened to in months, and unfinished letters. Too many introductions to letters he could not find the heart to finish, let alone send.

It looks a little something like this:

_Dear Renjun…_

_Junnie, I’m sorry._

_Renjun, I wish things were different._

_Junnie, I wish you knew how much I missed you._

_Jun, do you have faith in me to love you like how you should be loved? Do you still think about me?_

_Renjun-ah, do you still love me?_

The words never seem right; a baseball glove that hasn’t been broken into yet. Donghyuck scraps and crosses them out with red cheeks and remorse.

At night, Donghyuck sifts through his memories in a morose attempt to filter out his emotions and identify them one by one. He remembers their ice-cream outings (dates? He asks himself if maybe they were dates all along, and he’d just never realised), mango sorbet dripping down his fingers as he slurped noisily, earning stares from strangers and a slap to the shoulder from Renjun, who barely suppressed his amusement.

He remembers, and the memories are like drugs: so good, sweet, addictive. In the chaos, it is a constant handle onto a rose-tinted reality that no longer exists. He replays every moment at the park, his room, Renjun’s room, the ice-cream store, the train station.

The train station.

Truthfully, Donghyuck didn’t quite know if he loved Renjun yet. Because of course he does, they’ve been best friends since forever, but was there a point in feeling more than attached to someone he might never go home to? The first battle had been scarring, every practice they’d had beforehand like child’s play in comparison: Donghyuck had watched men from both sides go down, bullets flying from his own bayonet into someone else’s body, his own soldiers screaming into tufts of gauze during the aftermath as shrapnel was extracted from their thighs, chests, shoulders. They’d won the battle, Taeyong had assured, whatever the meaning of victory was now. One battle out of many others to come.

Donghyuck had woken up, cold sweat dripping down his neck, for nights on end afterwards. The incessant nightmares plagued him: the men he’d killed screaming and cursing him in their foreign accents, congealed black blood dripping from their uniforms. He’d stared at the pictures he’d brought: the book fair felt like it had happened in a different timeline altogether, and a Christmas celebration seemed so unrealistic.

The world is cold, he learns. When they are stripped of everything until there is nothing left: names, not background, not even the most rudimentary forms of identity, humans are savages. They tear each other down to climb imaginary ladders, sacrificing the blood of others for the reclamation of something supposedly rightfully theirs.

The world is cold. But some days, when he thinks of Renjun even for just a split second, an inexplicable warmth blooms in his chest.

* * *

One night, just past midnight, the silence of Donghyuck’s tent is broken: twenty men jammed into a twelve-man tent, piled over each other like sardines in a can. “What are we even fighting for?” The voice asks, trembling, tired.

For a while, there is nothing but the sound of mosquitoes buzzing and the dead air of exhaustion. It had been a long day filled with patrolling and fear, and there was nothing Donghyuck was looking forward to more than the slightest semblance of sleep. Donghyuck almost asks the boy, whoever he is, to shut up, until someone else speaks up drowsily.

“Peace.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” The first voice argues. “We’re fighting? For peace? Thousands of lives lost for another uneasily signed peace treaty and fragile reunification? How pointless.”

A sigh. “It’s just how it is, Hyunjin.”

“Seungmin, it…” All the fight drains out of the boy’s--Hyunjin’s plea, voice cracking and bleeding exhaustion like an eggshell. “It shouldn’t be like this.”

“Of course it shouldn’t, but that’s just the way things are, Hyunjin-ah, we can’t do anything about it--”

“I just can’t stand it!” Hyunjin cries, pitch rising, and the strangled desperation in his voice is like a train to Donghyuck’s chest. “Every day, we put our lives on the line. Every day, new cities and towns get attacked, looted, worse: it was a factory district in Bucheon two days ago, an elementary school in Ansan yesterday. Gyeonggi is half down with hundreds of lives lost, real people reduced to numbers and statistics. What will it be today, tomorrow? _Our_ hometown? _Our_ families?”

“I know how you feel, but this is not something to talk about here, or now. Just… go to sleep, Hyunjin. It’s been a long day, and it will be longer tomorrow.”

Beat. “It doesn’t make sense,” Hyunjin whispers, broken. “It just doesn’t.”

And then all is silent again, save the croaking of bullfrogs outside the tent.

(Despite being in the same platoon, Donghyuck doesn’t really know everyone in his Force. There are too many of them, after all; hundreds of men in the same Force. After that night, though, he gets to know Hwang Hyunjin and Kim Seungmin, a best friend duo from central Seoul. They share a history and dynamic all too similar to him and Renjun’s, and Donghyuck can’t stop drawing the parallels.

In the following battle, Hyunjin doesn’t make it, and Donghyuck’s heart breaks when Seungmin falls to his knees in a fit of tears and denial, shoulders shaking like leaves in a thunderstorm. Every following night without fail, the boy in question wakes up shivering and screaming his best friend’s name, shouting for someone who is not, who _cannot_ be by his side anymore.

 _Will that be Renjun?_ , a voice in Donghyuck asks, soft but no less torturous. _If you don’t come back, will that be him too?_ )

* * *

At some point, Donghyuck stops counting the days.

Donghyuck thinks himself lucky that he’s made it this far. He’d had far too many near misses for it not to be pure luck: bullets whizzing a hair’s breadth away from his face, instincts to dive kicking in a heartbeat before a grenade explodes near him, shrapnel and soil flying everywhere. He doesn’t know how many times they’ve fought with the North Koreans, but he does know that it’s enough times that reinforcements has had to be sent in multiple times. Half of the original Force 127 had been replaced with newer but not fresher faces. In fact, as time passed, their expressions seemed to get increasingly grim.

 _It’s okay_ , he thinks. _I have to get home. For Mom, for me._

_For Renjun._

Donghyuck still has no name for the feeling in his chest when he thinks about Renjun. Is it too early to call it love? Does he even have any experience with real love? Was it the same with boys as it was with girls? There were too many questions, and Donghyuck didn’t have the courage to voice any of them.

That is, until one night.

Jaemin and Donghyuck are on lookout duty that night; one so dark they could barely see five feet in front of them. This made it easy to spot enemy soldiers approaching, but it’s cold and the dense foliage prevents little moonlight, if any at all, from streaming in. Donghyuck shivers, holding his bayonet tighter to his chest.

Something the both of them have in common is the ability to talk about nothing and everything at the same time. During bleak times like those, it was an especially good trait to distract oneself from the absolute shitshow that was everything else happening around them. They’re on the topic of cats, of all things, when the topic is abruptly brought up.

“Jeno loves cats,” Jaemin mentions offhandedly.

“Jeno?” Donghyuck wonders aloud.

Jaemin turns to look at him, eyes wide. “What?”

“You mentioned a name. Jeno. Younger brother?”

Jaemin sighs. “Not younger brother. That’s Jisung,” He stops. “Jeno… simply put, my… ah, partner.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” Jaemin exhales. “More accurately, the love of my life.”

Donghyuck can barely see Jaemin’s face in the inkiness of the atmosphere, but he only needs to listen to hear the wistfulness in Jaemin’s voice.

“Wow.” Jaemin’s sheer sureness astounds Donghyuck. He could barely even dredge up a summary of what he currently felt towards Renjun, let alone label it so easily. “That’s… certain.”

“Sometimes, you just know, you know?” Donghyuck can hear the smile in Jaemin’s voice, and its softness makes the corners of his lips turn up. “It’s easy. I don’t know. Being with him is just… easy.”

“You don’t argue at all?”

Jaemin sounds affronted by this. “God, of course we do. We bicker quite a bit actually, and when he found out I signed on for this he went stone silent for five hours. But sometimes, all the time really, you power through it. You don’t have to; you can just leave, there’s no one stopping you, ultimately. But you do it because you love them.”

There’s a pause, and Donghyuck speaks, voice barely a whisper but still so loud in the silent night. “I think I’ve fucked up too royally for him to ever forgive me.”

“Does he love you?”

“He said he did. I’m not so sure now, it’s been months. And… we didn’t part on the best terms.” Understatement of the century.

“Do you love him?”

 _That’s a loaded question and it’s way too late at night for this_ , Donghyuck wants to retort, but chooses not to. “I don’t know. How do you know if you love your best friend if you’ve seen them the same way for ages except you’re not sure it’s as platonic as you’ve made it out to be?”

Jaemin chuckles. “God, you remind me of Jeno and I. We were best friends too; grew up together, made mistakes together, went through everything together now that I think about it. I never thought we’d be what we are now, but one day, things just…”

“Shifted,” Donghyuck finishes, exhaling. He knows the emotion all too well, and he wonders how long it took him to realise he was even feeling it. Too long, probably. “He confessed to me just as I boarded the train to Gangwon.”

“Sounds like a k-drama.”

“Kind of? Except the male lead doesn’t take it very well and pushes the poor protagonist away and leaves for the military instead of staying. Not very top Naver search material, in my opinion.”

“Why’s that?” Jaemin genuinely sounds curious. “Why didn’t he stay?”

Donghyuck is quiet for a long time. The silence seems to stretch on for minutes, hours, days; a line of static extending forever into the night. Donghyuck can feel his heart beating in his chest.

“Because he was scared,” He admits quietly. “Because he didn’t want to lose what he already had.”

There is no response for a while, and Donghyuck vaguely wonders if Jaemin has fallen asleep, but he eventually replies.

“You know, love isn’t that straightforward,” Jaemin begins, voice even. “Jeno and I went through misunderstandings and subsequent days of radio silence to get to this point. Sometimes, we literally had to spend time apart to recover, and it never gets easier. Every single time, it feels like we’re on the verge of a breakup and it scares the shit out of me without fail.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s _not_. In all fairness, it rarely ever happens, but still,” Jaemin sighs. “The concept of forever isn’t real, frankly; forever is a sandcastle waiting to be swept away by the tide. But think about it in the way that for every time you face a struggle, there are millions of other moments where you’re happy that outweigh the pain of that particular duration.”

“Am I really worth those moments though?”

“Who isn’t worth joy?” There’s a small smile in Jaemin’s tone. “It doesn’t even have to be big. It can just be… the smallest frames in an unordinary day. Because even the most dreary days can be the best if you spend it with someone you love. Love is frustrating; it constricts you and holds you back but in the end it shapes you. It changes you. We are only afraid of love because we are afraid of change.

“People treat love like a victory, but I like to disagree,” Jaemin finishes, and the air seems to warm with his words. “Love, I think, is learning to lose.”

Donghyuck digests his words. So maybe, maybe he hadn’t lost Renjun after all? Maybe there was a chance?

“Look,” Jaemin picks up again, gentle. “I’m not trying to give you false hope. You fucked up, so of course this person is bound to be hurt and angry. But these things pass. If you’re willing to make the effort to truly change for them, then surely they’ll recognise it. They might not forgive you so quickly, but you have to fight for anything worth keeping. Trust me when I say the payoff is worth every hardship.”

“It is?”

“A trillion times over.”

There is silence, and truthfully, Donghyuck finds himself at a loss for words. He had to fight for Renjun. Okay, he supposes that has been a given the entire time. But is he willing to put himself at risk for this? Bare his heart on his sleeve for it just to get broken?

 _But then again,_ he thinks, _isn’t that what Renjun had done?_ _Who’s the real coward in this situation?_

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” Jaemin starts up again, startling Donghyuck out of his silence. In the back of his mind, he knows they’re supposed to be on the lookout for enemy spies, and that they definitely should not be this sidetracked, but he somehow can’t bring himself to care. Not tonight. He turns to Jaemin, whose face he can just vaguely make out in the shadows.

Jaemin reaches to take a box out of his left breast pocket, the one just above his heart. When he opens it, Donghyuck gasps. There, barely visible in the limited moonlight, a silver ring with a small diamond gleams atop a layer of crushed velvet.

“What the fuck, is that a ring? Invite me to the wedding.”

Jaemin chuckles. “Sure, and yes. Diamond. Cheesy and overdone, yes, but it’s also his gemstone. He’s born in April, you see, and it fits him: hardy, always shining no matter how dark,” Jaemin stares at the ring, surveying it fondly. “I’ve carried it since training. Always the same pocket, with the pictures of him and my family.”

“Why have you even carried it?” Donghyuck asks, flabbergasted. _How reckless_ , a cynical part of him thinks. _It could get dirty; even worse, lost in the fray of battle._ He shuts this down.

“I didn’t want him to randomly chance upon it. Besides, I wanted to have it as a reminder of what I must go back to: the life I want to lead when this is all over.” Jaemin’s smile is dimmed by the darkness, but still bright nevertheless. He closes the box carefully, placing it back into his breast pocket. “I can only hope I’m alive to propose with it.”

“Don’t say that, Jaemin,” Donghyuck says in earnest. Jaemin was driven; had been since training camp, always the one to excel. Besides, Jaemin was easily one of the best people he knew. Surely the universe had his back for that reason alone, disregarding every other possible factor. “If anything, you’re the one out of all of us that has the best chance of staying alive. Even more than me.”

Jaemin ducks his head, blushing. When he looks up, though, the glint in his eyes is uncertain.

It’s almost like he knows that Donghyuck will be proven wrong.

* * *

This next battle is the last: the one that goes down in history textbooks as pivotal to the South Korean victory in the Second Korean War. But no one knows this yet: not any prophet, or soldier, or Lee Taeyong. Most of all, Donghyuck doesn’t know this yet, and he drafts a letter to Renjun in the small notebook he keeps around before falling in for briefing.

“It’s the biggest one yet,” Taeyong briefs, voice detached but authoritative. “We’re talking numbers of over sixty thousand soldiers on their side, major weapons, tanks. Our navy has mobilised the seas for now, and our air force is ready, but we don’t know how long we’ll be out in the field. Could be days, a week, longer.”

There’s an unspoken warning, and the tension lingers heavy on the shoulders and faces of war-hardened soldiers. More time in the field meant more time to get caught; taken prisoner in the concentration camps, tortured in unimaginable ways, killed, worse. More opportunity to be eviscerated limb from limb, cell by cell.

A black sense of doom settles itself in Donghyuck’s chest.

When the battle begins, guns sounding in his ears as he dodges, runs, hides. It’s muscle memory at this point; find a safe (whatever can be considered so, at least for the time being) place that obscures your back and snipe from there. Donghyuck had never had the best speed or stamina, but what he could attest for was that he has precision; could aim, shoot, deliver.

Sometimes, it’s a detriment. Donghyuck doesn’t look away when he watches bullets tear through uniform fabric and skin. He can’t afford to, really, when his attention is switched almost immediately to another soldier. The sight, however, revisits him at night in slow-motion: the bloom of blood blossoming on uniform, the choked gasp as the soldier falls.

It’s one thing when it’s a life for a life. It’s another when it’s a life for your own.

When night falls, Donghyuck digs a trench in the covered, forested area and stands in it, shivering and hiding from the torch beams that threaten to expose him. Footsteps thud mechanically as enemy soldiers prowl to and fro like evil beasts, foreign accents light as if they weren’t in the middle of an all-out war. They talk about killing like it is a game, trade anecdotes about the battlefield and somehow have the audacity to boast about the lives they had ended: how many, in what gruesome way. It sickens Donghyuck to his stomach.

In that moment, in his muddy haphazard trench, Donghyuck (not even for the first time, not even close) considers giving it all up. What was the point, anyway? Humanity was still going to shit. Things wouldn’t change. All this for what? Peace? In exchange for millions of good lives? It felt wrong. Hyunjin was right that night in the tent: it was all pointless.

The night wind blows into him a bone-deep chill that encases his heart in seemingly perpetual ice. However, eyes and ears alert for any indication of enemy presence while his teeth chatter uselessly in the draft, Renjun comes to mind.

Renjun’s smile, impish and kind. His open belief in the supernatural. His constant advocacy for freedom of expression and individualism, and how he’d almost fistfought a racist kid in their Government class over it. How his care for others simply manifested in everything he said and did.

The coldness stays, but the blank numbness subsides, and Donghyuck feels like he can breathe freely; reminded of the one (if any) thing he has yet to live for.

It is in his ugly, disgusting trench at God-knows-what time in the dead of night that Donghyuck realises he’s in love with Renjun.

If Donghyuck is honest, it’s pretty underwhelming, and one day in the future he might ask the universe for a do-over. There is no lightning strike, no shower of sparks, no sudden rainstorm or dramatic, Taeyeon-sung OST ballad in the background. His chest doesn’t even feel a sense of warmth. It’s mostly just… relief.

There’s a word, finally, to everything he’d been feeling over the past… however long it’s been. A year, give or take? A year of zero interaction with the one person occupying his mind day in and day out; not completely out of choice, but partially at the same time.

All he had of Renjun were the memories of a decade and a half’s worth of decadent joy and easy, intimate friendship. The recollections kept him alive, along with the promise of whatever the future held if he made it back. Donghyuck, after all, has never not done the most to chase after his dreams. He has so much to lose, he realises: so much more than he’d initially thought.

This is love, he thinks-- no, _knows_ : living for a day you might not even see just because there could be someone waiting on the other side of the time’s ruthless chasm. This is love, he knows, as he eventually drifts into a restless, uncomfortable slumber: living against all the odds. Living when you feel like dying.

This is love: living.

Donghyuck is awoken by the faintest rays of sun as a new day begins, most of the light obscured by the thick foliage of the tree he’s under. His arms ache when he pushes himself out of the trench, his entire being weakened with exhaustion, but he stands anyway, only staggering the slightest bit.

He doesn’t know where he is, and so although there’s no one around him in his immediate periphery, Donghyuck keeps his back covered, holding onto his rifle as he stealthily tries to make his way out of the forest, or at least to a place where he can find the fellow soldiers in his Force.

Donghyuck forgets, in the peace of what would be a pretty forest, that the danger will always find him, and not even twenty minutes into aimlessly walking without a map, he hears a scuffle from somewhere far out to his right. A resounding barrage of gunshots, accented threats and shouts mingling together. Swivelling quickly, he peers into the trees, wondering if he’d just imagined it; hearing things and hallucinating out of sleep-deprivation and paranoia.

Then, a shout of pain, and Donghyuck takes off running towards it. That scream, he thinks, is too familiar for comfort: the timbre of that strangled, sharp sound too easy to recognise. He sprints forward, looking around worriedly, praying with all of his might that his suspicions were faulty.

He reaches a small clearing, then stills. Na Jaemin sits against a tree, his back pressed into the trunk and his eyes wide and facing skyward.

It would almost be a tranquil sight, if one ignored the way his chest rapidly rose and fell in shallow pants, or the growing pool of blood on his uniform from his stomach.

In a flash, Donghyuck is by his side, whisper-shouting in horror.

“Jaemin!”

With the effort of a thousand men, Jaemin turns his head to face Donghyuck. His eyes are bloodshot and glassy, and Donghyuck can literally see the life and energy fading from them. Donghyuck’s heart sinks. This couldn’t be happening. Not to Jaemin. Not to the one with the most to lose. Not to the one with the highest training scores, the almost-fiance and soulmate waiting at home, the one who was _supposed to make it back alive_.

“Donghyuck, you’re here.”

“No shit I am.” Donghyuck takes a deep breath. He hates the way that Jaemin looks like he’s already accepted the inevitability of his death, at peace and resigned when he was normally the one taking the most initiative with the most drive. Donghyuck couldn’t allow that, not _ever_. “Look, we need to get you to a medic right now. I don’t really know where we are, but the DMZ is only so big, right? I can try to gauge a way back to camp, here, stand up, let me just--” He motions to put his arms around Jaemin’s shoulders to gently hoist him into a standing position, but Jaemin stops him.

“No. Leave it. I’m okay.”

“What the hell do you mean, you’re not okay? You’re bleeding out!” Donghyuck’s voice rises in panic. “We need to get the fuck out of here, like, yesterday. Jaemin, you can’t die, come on, don’t be stubborn, stand up, I’ll _help_ you--”

“Donghyuck, I’m telling you right now to stop.” Jaemin’s voice comes out weak and strained, and when he coughs, blood sputters out of his lips in a spray. It breaks Donghyuck’s heart.

“No.”

Jaemin answers simply, tone neutral but firm, and Donghyuck starts to get really sick of it. Tears spring to his eyes, and his voice cracks.

“Jaem, you’re going to _die_ ,” He pleads. Jaemin looks so pitiful, coughing up crimson spurts, curled up on himself like a small animal, the blood stain slowly growing on his uniform. Jaemin looks at him, and his gaze is still fierce despite his body weakening by the second.

“You don’t think I know that?”

“Jaemin, no, let’s go,” Donghyuck moves closer, and it hurts him to see Jaemin, with whatever remnants of strength he has left, physically jerk away from his touch. Donghyuck sighs, and the tears fall regardless of whether he wills them to or not. “I can’t-- no, I won’t let you leave like this. You still have to go back to Jeno, remember? You still have to--”

“Donghyuck, no,” Jaemin is unyielding even as he begins to slip away, and his lips quirk into a humourless smile. “I won’t make it. Even if a medic miraculously shows up right now, I won’t. It’s lodged in my stomach, Donghyuck.. I don’t need medical training to know that even if I survived, I’d be living off IV drips and a hospital bed for the rest of my days, and we both know I’d rather die than live a life half-lived.”

“But Jeno--”

“Jeno knows,” Jaemin’s tone is gravelly, and his throat seems to close up as he begins to cry as well. “When I signed on, we both knew there was a risk. And we took it anyway.” He takes a deep breath. “This is the last thing I have to tell you, Donghyuck,” His voice fades into a whisper, softer and softer with each breath, and Donghyuck scoots closer. Ironically, he’s not the one injured or dying, but his entire body shakes, his breath coming out in wet sobs.

Jaemin pauses to compose himself, then speaks again, the air in his voice dissipating slowly. “Love is a risk,” He barely coughs out. The blood spatters onto Donghyuck’s uniform, but he can’t find it in him to care. “It’s a million small risks in one big risk and everything you do will have some sort of load to it, even if it seems like nothing.” He inhales sharply, winces. “But it’s worth all of it. All the-- _fuck--_ pain. Everything. Take every leap of faith. With every broken bone, every,” He chuckles derisively. “Every bullet wound. They don’t matter. All that does is that you have known love.”

As his breaths grow shallower and ragged, Jaemin reaches a trembling hand into his right pocket, unearths the small box and presses it into Donghyuck’s right hand, the exertion of the action too energy consuming as he slumps further onto the tree trunk. Donghyuck stares at it in half incredulity and half fear. He knows what’s coming.

“Give this to him for me, won’t you?” Jaemin smiles. His voice is nothing more than a whisper now, and Donghyuck has to practically put his ear to Jaemin’s lips to fully understand what he’s saying. “Nam-gu, Busan. There’s a small restaurant at the end of Yongho-dong. Ask for him. Lee Jeno. Promise me.”

In very few moments of his life has Donghyuck found himself truly speechless. He’s always been a talker, with an aptitude for brevity that carried him through life by knowing exactly what to say at any time. But here, in the middle of a forest in the DMZ, Donghyuck finds that, for once, he has nothing to say. One of his best friends was dying, and he couldn’t save him. One of his best friends, who had someone to go home to, was dying, and he couldn’t do anything but watch. He has no good words, no reassurances, nothing but a simple:

“I promise.”

“Good,” Jaemin’s eyelids begin to flutter, and the sunlight streaming through the trees paints the picture in deceptive golden. If Donghyuck just closes his eyes, he can imagine that the two of them are just playing around in the woods, living their best instead of dying for a greater good they could barely understand. Jaemin’s face is serene, open.

Jeno’s name falls from his lips like a prayer, and then he's gone, with a gust of breeze that sweeps through the mourning trees. Donghyuck is still kneeled next to him as if in prayer, salty rivulets pouring down his face silently.

All of a sudden, the ring box in the palm of his hand is so much more than a means for proposal: it’s another reason for Donghyuck to stay alive. Another reason to keep going, and the responsibility burns of fear and pressure but somehow Donghyuck doesn’t mind. For Jaemin.

For Renjun. If this is a risk he has to take to fulfil the end of someone else’s love, maybe he can have the courage to fulfil his own, too.

“Jaemin,” Donghyuck whispers, and he shouts his name like a madman as he throws himself on one of his best friends’ corpses. They were supposed to make it out alive, together. What was that quote, the one about life picking the prettiest flowers from its garden? _It shouldn’t have been him_ , Donghyuck thinks despairingly. _It should’ve been me, or Kang Wootaek; anyone but Na Jaemin._

When he picks himself up, tears smudging the grime on his face, he stumbles desperately: lost in the woods, past trees that all look the same and clouds that pass. Eventually, he collapses out of sheer exhaustion and grief in a clearing; tired, shivering, clutching his rifle like a lifeline.

In retrospect, he will think about the recklessness of that move; how grief and mourning drives people to the precipice of carelessness and self-degradation. He will think about how Jaemin will never get to tell Jeno that he loves him in a safe world, and apply that to him and Renjun.

Donghyuck realises the fragility of his existence in that moment; how it could be shattered in an instant. How he could’ve easily died long ago in the fray of the war, and never once would’ve been able to tell Renjun that he loved him: truly, deeply.

He wakes to someone shaking him, and he reaches for his bayonet on instinct, aiming the barrel at the man’s chest from his (disadvantageous) position on the ground. To his surprise and utter relief, it’s Mark Lee: another soldier from his Force, and he puts his rifle down as Mark outstretches his hand to pull him up.

“Let’s get back to base, Lee,” Mark says. “We have work to do.”

Still bleary, Donghyuck blinks the grogginess of sleep and the aftershocks of grief from his eyes. “What’s going on?”

“We won,” Mark feigns nonchalance, but his relief is still clear as day.

“The battle?”

“No,” And finally, Mark turns to him and smiles, his broad grin lighting up his face handsomely. “The war. North Korea surrendered around thirty minutes ago, and the soldiers working in the logistics tent were sent out to gather everyone back. We can go home. We’re done.”

It doesn’t feel real; even when Donghyuck all but pounces on Mark in a hug despite not having talked to him all that much. Even when he goes back to base and finds every soldier chattering excitingly, packing up their tents and valuables. Even when he shakes Lee Taeyong’s hand as he boards the train home from Gangwon, thanking him for his service. The ghosts of Jaemin, Hyunjin, the countless others that had died in the name of peace haunt him, a deep-seated chill in his bloodstream not attributed to the winter. On the train, he can’t sleep: the faces of dead soldiers and civilians burned onto the back of his eyelids.

Peace, after many months of constant fighting and training to be on edge, is a peculiar but not unwelcome feeling. It wiggles around for room in the cavity of Donghyuck's chest, then settles. It feels like finding an oasis in the middle of a desert, or mango sorbet on a hot day. It feels like relief.

Donghyuck almost forgets to alight at Nam-gu, but he does, and he spends the majority of his first afternoon free from the military scouring the smaller subdivision of Yongho-dong for the restaurant Jaemin was talking about. When he does find it, the sun is setting, and the restaurant is almost full to bursting with people and the aroma of the hearty, home-cooked food Donghyuck has so missed.

It’s family-run, to state the obvious: the sheer warmth of the servers and the _ahjumma_ at the counter says a lot about that. Donghyuck takes his order of _haejangguk_ and a bottle of soju, and sits down at a table in the corner, tucked almost completely out of sight. When his food is served, it’s by a server with dark, messy hair and a lanky gait.

Maybe it’s the innate gauntness in Donghyuck’s face that gives it away, but the boy gets the words out in a rush. “You’re a soldier.”

The boy’s perceptiveness takes Donghyuck by surprise, but he smiles anyway, albeit caught slightly off-guard. “Yes, I am.”

“Right, right. I don’t know, you just looked very tired, and I just-- well, you have a bunch of gashes and everything so I kind of just--” The boy clears his throat mid-sentence, shifting his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. “I don’t suppose you’d know my hyung? His name is Jaemin, Na Jae-- forget it, I’m sorry,” The boy rambles. “Not all soldiers know each other, and everything, I’m sorry, my name is Jisung, by the way, I’m just nervous because there's been no news since hyung left and it’s just kind of worrying--”

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Donghyuck smiles. An endeared instinct in him wants to ruffle the kid’s hair and pinch his cheeks, even though Jisung probably surpasses him in height despite looking barely adult. “And, yeah, I know-- knew Jaemin,” he corrects. “We were friends.”

 _Knew. Were._ Past tense.

“Really?” Jisung’s eyes light up. “Where is he? Have you seen him at all? Is he coming home?”

Donghyuck falls silent. All he can think about is his last image of Jaemin, slumped against a miscellaneous tree trunk in the middle of the DMZ, bleeding out from the gaping bullet wound in his stomach. No chance of burial or honourable death. The name ‘Jisung’ had brought back flashbacks of the time Jaemin had talked about him, name fond in his mouth; his tall, well-meaning dongsaeng who would take over the world with his passion for dance. How could he possibly tell these warm, kind people? How could he just break their hearts like that?

Jisung must pick up on the muted grief in Donghyuck’s expression, because his shoulders stiffen instantly, voice quivering. “You know something, don’t you?” He accuses quietly, but not maliciously. “It’s not just a coincidence that you’re here, isn’t it? Something happened.” He pauses, and Donghyuck can practically see him connecting the dots in his head. “Something happened to hyung. To Jaemin.”

And still Donghyuck stays silent. This war, he muses, seemed to have not only taken lives and Donghyuck’s usual penchant for sleep, but also his greatest strength: his words.

Not even daring to look Jisung in the eye, he swallows the lump in his throat and barely manages to choke out, “I was told to ask for a Lee Jeno."

Jeno is more slight than Donghyuck had expected, but after Jaemin had described him as “the Asian Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson”, he thinks that is to be expected. His demeanour is kind and quiet as he takes a seat across from Donghyuck after closing, bowls and customers long since cleared away.

“Jeno-ssi.”

The man smiles, but it’s dim and muted. “Jisungie tells me you’re a soldier. Thank you for your service.”

Donghyuck shrugs. “Just doing the best I can. My name is Donghyuck, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Donghyuck-ssi. How may I help you?”

Donghyuck inhales, bracing himself in a sense, before he pulls out the black ring box from his bag and sets it on the table between them. Jeno peers at it in curiosity.

“A ring box…?”

“Jaemin asked me to give it to you.”

Jeno smiles, almost uncomprehendingly. “Jaemin? Why would Jaemin ask--”

Donghyuck can see the realisation set in as Jeno’s shoulders slump, in the way that Jeno’s eyes that had lit up at the sound of Jaemin’s name dimmed slowly, the light draining from them. All of a sudden, Jeno -- who probably towered over him in height and trumped him in general stature as well -- looked so, so small.

Clearing his throat, Donghyuck attempts to dredge up some form of coherence as he continues, his heart in his throat. “Jaemin bought this ring before enlisting. I was only made privy to it around a week before the Last Battle. It was constantly on his person, and no one knew about it. In fact, I think I was the only one he told.”

In front of him, Jeno has gone completely silent. Motionless, like his muscles are locked in place, frozen by icy grief and disbelief.

Nevertheless, Donghyuck pushes on, the words spilling out of him in halves, quarters, fragments. “He always cared about you, you know? He said he’d only brought it along because he didn’t want you to find it when you were gone, and wanted to use it as a reminder for himself to remember, even when times were hard, that he had something to go back to; a future to see.”

The love that Donghyuck had seen in the friend he’d made had only spurred him to want that for himself. Renjun had never left his mind for a day during the war: a sliver of home amidst the unfamiliarity, a rock to ground himself during a raging thunderstorm. Every day he spent away from home meant another day sifting through ice-cream-stained nostalgia and the memories of a mango-hued past; wishing, longing, yearning.

This is love, he thinks. This is its essence, in all its bad and ugly: pure to the point of childish, spontaneous to the point of careless.

He understands. In the myths, epics, legends; this was what they had lost their minds for. This was what they had fought the wars for, what philosophers had spent their whole lives trying to put into words, what scientists devoted time to quantifying into formulas and numbers. This sweet, sweet feeling of selfish, serendipitous salvation.

“I hope you know,” Donghyuck says, quietly, “that he didn’t die alone, nor in vain. His last words were his request for me to bring this to you, then finally, your name. I hope you know that he loved you till the very end and, knowing his sheer determination, will probably find a way to continue doing so even after.

“I don’t know anything about you other than your name, Jeno-ssi,” He ends, taking a breath. “Jaemin kept the details of you and your relationship with him extremely private, but I do like to think that you would do the same for him.”

The silence between them is palpable, and after a while Donghyuck wonders if he’d said too much, or too little, or just the wrong things in general. Just as he begins to overthink it, Jeno speaks, voice strained with holding back tears but still matter-of fact.

“Thank you,” he mutters. He scoops up the ring box with one palm, and when he opens it, his eyes curve into wistful half-moons. “You couldn’t possibly understand how much this means to me, to Jaemin. Thank you for travelling all this way, Donghyuck-ssi.”

“Don’t even mention it,” Donghyuck bats. “You deserve the closure.”

Jeno pauses for a second, as if considering his next words, but continues regardless. “Jaemin always loved people too much for his own good,” He reminisces, fond. “It’s why he enlisted, you know? He went from loving his friends and family unconditionally to loving strangers who were risking it all for others; so much so that he became one of them. We were hurt, in the beginning, puzzled as to why he’d make life so much harder for himself than need be; but in the end, it is _so_ Jaemin to give himself to something for other people’s benefit. Besides, even if we had tried to stop him, he would’ve found a way to make it happen anyway. It’s just part of his nature.”

“I totally agree,” Donghyuck nods with assent. “Too much achievement in that boy to be healthy.”

Jeno chuckles, sincere but subdued, strained. “We knew there was a chance he wouldn’t make it back, and if I’m honest I’ve spent the fourteen months he’s been gone preparing myself for that possibility. But I guess I always had that… tiny bit of hope.” He laughs wetly. “All that mental prep for nothing. Doesn’t lessen the blow at all.”

Hope. It kills, but it also rebuilds: the smallest piece of naive childishness that remains even in the face of unimaginable danger. He sees, in this moment, why Jaemin had loved Jeno; could practically see the both of them together in his mind’s eye. There was so much sureness in their words, and it threw Donghyuck off amidst all the instability of the last fourteen months, both internal and external.

That, he realises, could be him and Renjun. He used to think that that could only happen in another alternate realm, but maybe it could be in this universe too, if he stopped running for just a moment.

“Somehow,” Jeno continues. “Even from miles away, he still manages to make me feel loved. He’s…” Jeno swallows, and only then does Donghyuck really see the tears prickling at the corners of his eyes threatening to spill over any second. “He’s gone, but I know he’ll kind of be with me forever. Does that make sense?”

“I guess?” Donghyuck smiles, slightly uncertain. “But really? Forever?”

Forever. An infinite frame spanning the entire fabric of time without wrinkling it. A space of duration so unbelievably large it’s beyond human comprehension, and is thus belittled and cut into bite-sized cubes for average human brains to romanticise in Instagram captions and barely process.

Forever speaks of certainty, of eternal commitment. Absolutely horrifying, in Donghyuck’s opinion.

But in the end, what does he know when he has so much yet to learn?

Jeno stops to think, turning the possibilities around in his head, then lets out a tiny half-smile. “Forever isn’t a real concept,” He says slowly, and in that moment Donghyuck is reminded so intensely of that night in the woods when Jaemin had said the exact same thing. “But in whatever commercialised meaning of the word: yeah, I think so. He’ll always be, in some form or another, imprinted in my heart. Always walking with me. I have no doubts about it; knowing Jaemin, he’d harass God to get his way.”

“I’m glad.”

Jeno pockets the ring box when Donghyuck stands, ready to leave. “It’s getting very late, Donghyuck-ssi, are you sure you don’t want to stay the night? I’m quite sure we have an empty guest room, or you could crash on the couch--”

“I’m good, thank you, Jeno-ssi. You’ve already shown me much hospitality with dinner, and I have… places I need to be.”

Renjun, his mind supplies. It’s like tunnel vision, almost: a final stretch to the light at the end of a long, winding tunnel.

“How are you getting back?”

“I’ll take the last train, which leaves in,” Donghyuck checks his watch. “Twelve minutes. Shit.” He curses, quickly gathering his (thankfully few) belongings and shrugging on his coat and scarf. “I’ll head to the station now. Thank you for having me, and I hope,” He pauses, struggling to find the words. “I hope your healing brings you more relief than pain.”

“I think you’ll need that last bit more than I do, Donghyuck-ssi,” Jeno smiles knowingly, the barest trace of tears making their way down his face. “Don’t be afraid to seek help from others. It does not make you less of a person.”

Months ago, Donghyuck would have disagreed. He had valued independence over everything, making his way in life on his own terms. Now, he thinks that perhaps Jeno is right.

“I won’t.”

Jeno grins kindly at him, and it’s the first one to fully reach his eyes in the entire (admittedly extremely short) time they’ve known each other. He grabs Donghyuck’s hand, shaking it in mutual understanding. “Don’t be a stranger, yeah?”

 _Maybe I won’t_ , Donghyuck turns the possibility over in his head, as he walks to the train station. It’s snowing there, the snowflakes coming down in thin sheets. _Maybe I won’t, after all._

When he reaches his hometown, it’s almost 2:30am. This is a place he knows all too well; a place overridden and tinged with his lifeblood, every place having its own experiences tied to it. As he steps off the train into the chilly winter night air, his breath coming out in puffs of water vapour, Donghyuck feels right at home. In the distance, he can see the neon sign of the 24/7 convenience store across from the station shining even as the snow falls, where he used to get roasted seaweed and soju with Renjun if they bombed their exam results. Next to it, there’s the hole-in-the-wall restaurant which Jeongin’s _halmeoni_ ran, where they’d congregate in a big group for barbecue on Friday afternoons after school.

Around him, though, is the train station, and he remembers its corresponding events all too well. Mentally, he makes a note not to fuck things up a second time.

When he turns into his cul-de-sac, his senses are overwhelmed with suppressed emotion and memory. There’s Taeil’s house, the senior who used to tutor him and Renjun in Math before he moved to the UK to study. Almost laughing, he walks past the perimeter of the park, recalling each and every fall and scraped knee when he had learned to cycle with Renjun. The creamery, where he and Renjun would always argue about whether mint chocolate was valid (Donghyuck, obviously, opposing, while Renjun made vehement hand gestures and threats to unfriend him).

He comes up on the street afterwards, just before the one where his family’s house stands, and his chest constricts like vines around his lungs. Donghyuck walks through the snow-covered road; one step, two steps.

At the end of it all stands his life; his home.

It is 2:48am when he rings the doorbell to the Huang residence, muscles weary and eyelids drooping from physical exhaustion. Mentally, though, he is wide awake; has never been more awake in his life. To his surprise, the door swings open, and he is greeted with Renjun: still smaller than him, rubbing the bleariness from his eyes, in his striped pyjamas and purple bunny slippers which Donghyuck had gifted him for Christmas three years prior. The sight warms his heart.

“Who are you and why are you ringing the doorbell at two in the goddamn morn--”

When he looks up at Donghyuck in half defiance, his expression melts into one of shock, then one of heartbreak, then a careful mask of cool neutral. The slight waver in his voice is the only giveaway of his emotions.

“Donghyuck.”

The way Renjun is staring at him right now, mouth pressed into a hard line of confusion, exhaustion and frustration, Donghyuck figures he has nothing left to lose. He had spent his whole life curating his words and vocabulary to appeal to people and their various situations, but in this moment, for the first time ever, he thinks, _fuck it, will it even matter anyway?_

“Before you say anything, I’m sorry,” He blurts, uninhibited. The cold does nothing to stop him, freeze his tongue, and so he keeps going. “I’m sorry I left you like that at the train station, for leading you on. I’m sorry that you deserve so much better than me, someone who could hand you everything you’ve ever wanted and more on a silver platter. I’m sorry that you’ve had to deal with everything since forever and a half ago, and that I remained oblivious to it despite the fact that I’m supposed to be, that I am..?” He trails off into a question, looking at Renjun hopefully, but Renjun’s expression remains impassive. He soldiers on. “...your best friend. I’m sorry. I wish there was a word that could better convey how I feel.”

Beat. “Is that all you’re here to say?” Renjun speaks, neither icily nor welcome. Toneless, not even lukewarm. “Because I really don’t need to be rejected another time, I already know how you feel about me, and before you say anything, _yes,_ we can stay best,” Renjun spits out that word like a curse. “ _Friends_ ; and _yes_ , nothing will change, blah blah bl--”

“You’ve got it wrong,” and Donghyuck doesn’t even try to find an eloquent way to express it. Renjun may be a sucker for metaphors and imagery, and Donghyuck would normally be prone to beating around the bush; but for once, he wanted to cut straight to the bone.

“Actually, I love you. Very, very much.”

The incredulous, cautiously awed expression that erupts across Renjun’s face makes it all worthwhile, and where the weight of the world felt like it had bound him to the tar of the floor, Donghyuck feels like he was flying. He’s reminded of Jaemin’s words that night in the jungle, ringing in his mind:

_(“...Trust me when I say the payoff is worth every hardship.”_

_“It is?”_

_“A trillion times over.”)_

“I don’t forgive you,” Renjun says resolutely, after a while, looking at his hands as he plays with them. “...but I also told you that I wouldn’t before you got on that stupid fucking train, so that isn’t really a ‘me’ problem. You were warned.”

Donghyuck chuckles. “Okay. There’s a ‘but’ here, right?"

“Not exactly,” Renjun deadpans, looking straight at Donghyuck through his eyelashes. His face betrays nothing but seriousness, and Donghyuck finds that even more magnetising than anything else. “I still love you, though, but you should understand why I don’t quite forgive you yet. I’m not going to go through another 14-month bout of the equivalent of emotional blue-balling.”

Donghyuck laughs, and it comes out in a puff of smoke that disappears between them, and he bats playfully at Renjun’s shoulder. “Shut the fuck up. This is a callout.”

“It was meant to be one,” Renjun retorts smoothly, stepping closer. “However, I’m glad you finally realised that you loved me. Can’t believe it took you a war to figure it out. You’re that dense, huh?”

“Emotional repression and internalised heteronormativity is one hell of a combo,” Donghyuck attempts to rebut nonchalantly, but the shine in Renjun’s eyes warms his words inside out. Holding back a grin, Donghyuck bites the inside of his cheek.

“Do you remember when I said I’d kill you if you dared to make it back alive?” Renjun smiles, and in the bad lamplight and overall darkness of the night, it’s blinding. It hits Donghyuck in the centre of his heart, makes a space for itself there along with the image of Renjun, lit golden, sprawled on top of Donghyuck’s comforter as he reads.

“Yeah?”

“Well, you’re here now, aren’t you? You dared to come back.” To his surprise, Renjun steps even closer, and wraps his pyjama-clad arms around Donghyuck’s neck until their breaths intermingle, noses almost touching.

“I guess I did.”

“It’s cold,” Renjun comments airily, eyes darting around them. The night sky is dark, speckled with tiny stars, and the remains of the snowfall from a couple hours ago remain on the trees and on the ground. “Might die out here.”

“Mm,” Donghyuck replies intelligently. The sight of Renjun’s lips is distracting; pink from the cold, full and currently pulled into a teasing smirk.

“Looks like you might be warm enough for the both of us, though.” And without warning, Renjun slots their lips together into a kiss. It tastes like lemon and honey and it sets Donghyuck on fire, and as always, Renjun is right.

In the space of Renjun’s arms at 2:53 on that cold Sunday night, Donghyuck has never felt more at home.

* * *

A couple years later, when all is as settled as it can be, Donghyuck unearths the notebook that he kept during the war from the depths of a dusty, long-forgotten cardboard box. Consequently, he rereads the letter he wrote to Renjun just before the Last War. It goes something like this:

_Dear Renjun,_

_As this war goes on, I get increasingly worried that I will not make it back home. We've reached the apex of it, really, and the pressure on everyone mounts every day._

_I think I understand now. Dad couldn’t have survived unscathed, and I was a fool to have thought that I could too. I could come out this without a bad ankle, or any other injury that might hinder me in the future, but being constantly surrounded by loss with no real sense of victory is another pain altogether. I’ve made so many friends and acquaintances only for them to be gunned down in battle by those North Koreans._

_After this, there will be reunification on whatever faux-peaceful terms the two governments cook up, but I don’t think I could ever erase the feeling of watching my brothers going down in battle and never getting back up. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for their families, even if they’re not there to see it. Does the peace treaty really spell peace, then? Is it so easy to reach that resolution when so many lives have been taken without thought?_ _We could win the war, I think, and it still would not be worth it._

_Come to think of it, I’ve survived this long (or at the very least, not gone completely off my rocker) because of the thought of you._

_It’s funny finding love in the midst of a war; or rather, realising it was there all along. Ironically, you’re not here with me right now, and I see belatedly how I have taken your presence for granted. It should be-- no, it_ is _a privilege to be by your side, Renjunnie. Everything is crashing and burning, and yet you stay flawlessly intact in my memories._

_Renjun, if there’s one thing I want to say to you when this is all over (if I can), it’s that I love you._

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

_I would say it a million times every day, as many times as you want if only to get you to just get the smallest hint of how much I love you. I would fight a thousand wars if it meant you’d love me back too: maybe not in equal fervour, but just enough._

_Anything you could give me, I think, is enough._

_Hope. You are my hope, the one that has kept me sane in this place of insanity and conflict, where the worst sides of the human condition have been revealed. I want to learn more about you, and I want to learn to love you to the fullest of my capabilities._

_Is it selfish for me to hope you’re still waiting for me? I have no doubt at all that you’ll beat the living shit out of me the moment you see my face after I (hopefully) come home, but nevertheless I pray you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me._

_You were right that day at the station: I am a coward. I’ve stayed within the parameters of my own selfish bubble of comfort for years; but for you, I’m willing to step out._

_For you, I want to be brave._

_Yours, in every aspect of the word,_

_Donghyuck._

("You're so fucking cheesy," Renjun says, hitting his arm playfully when Donghyuck reads it to him one night before bed, but not even a deaf man can miss the fondness in his voice.

"You love me, though."

"Well." Renjun pretends to scratch his chin in deep thought. "I guess."

Donghyuck makes a noise of affront, and Renjun's ensuing laugh sounds like a song.

"Just kidding, I do."

Despite the changes that have come with reunification and time's inevitable passage, Donghyuck still suffers the aftershocks of the war. Sometimes, he finds himself looking over his shoulder for no particular reason, or startling awake at night in cold sweat seeing faces and hearing voices that aren't there. Thankfully, he is not alone.

"I love you, too."

Thankfully, he is home.)

**Author's Note:**

> written for prompt #124!
> 
> [twitter!!](https://twitter.com/dreamsforjeno)  
> kudos and comments greatly appreciated!  
> hope you enjoyed reading this >_<


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